The subject matter disclosed herein relates generally to medical diagnostic imaging systems, and more particularly, to a dual-energy imaging system configured to perform densitometry measurements.
Conventional imaging systems are utilized by a physician to assess various medical conditions. One such condition is to diagnose growth disorders that may be caused by hormone deficiencies. One common approach to diagnosing growth disorders is to generate a radiograph of the hand and wrist of a patient. The radiograph of the hand and wrist is used by the physician to determine the skeletal age of the patient. A difference between the skeletal age and the chronological age of the patient may indicate a delay in the growth of the patient. The delay may be caused by a hormone deficiency or some other deficiency.
There are two common methods of determining a skeletal age of the patient. The first method is the Greulich-Pyle (GP) method. The Greulich-Pyle method utilizes an atlas of reference pictures. Each reference picture in the Greulich-Pyle atlas includes a score that represents the developmental age of a particular bone in the hand or wrist. The atlas is typically a book that includes numerous pictures of various bones in the hand and wrist at various developmental stages. A physician selects a reference radiograph from the Greulich-Pyle atlas that best matches each site in the radiograph of the patient and uses a scoring system to produce a skeletal bone age of the hand and wrist, which is compared to the chronological age of the patient to diagnose growth disorders, etc.
Another method of determining a skeletal age of the patient is the Tanner-Whitehouse method. Similar to the Greulich-Pyle method, the Tanner-Whitehouse method requires the physician to select a reference radiograph from the Tanner-Whitehouse atlas that best matches each site in the radiograph of the patient, and uses a scoring system to produce a skeletal bone age of the hand and wrist which is compared to the chronological age of the patient to diagnose growth disorders, etc.
The image comparisons required in the Greulich-Pyle method and the Tanner-Whitehouse method are each time consuming and may produce inaccurate results. For example, each of the conventional methods requires a trained physician to manually select the reference images from the conventional atlases which rely on the physician's judgment when selecting the reference images. Moreover, selecting the reference images is relatively time consuming because the physician is required to search the atlas for each site to select a reference image that best represents that specific site. Therefore, measurements of the skeletal age of the same patient may vary from physician to physician.